between the surface and the center?
The answer to your question is, yes, there is a huge difference in temperature and density between the surface and the center of the Sun. The temperature at the surface is about 6,000 degrees Kelvin, the density is about 10^17 atoms per cubic centimeter (10^17 is scientific notation for a 1 followed by 17 zeros). This is about one ten-thousandth of the atmospheric density at the Earth’s surface. Writing the density another way, it’s about 2 x 10^-7 grams per cubic centimeter (or 0.0000002 g/cc). (Don’t take our word for it, however; please verify these figures in an astronomy textbook.) Most of our knowledge about conditions at the center of the Sun comes from theoretical calculations, using models of what we think is happening inside the Sun. These calculations show that the temperature at the center is about 15 million degrees Kelvin and the density is about 150 grams per cubic centimeter. This is hot enough and dense enough for nuclear fusion reactions to occur (where two atomic nuc
